Three Times Chuck Meets Sarah
by malamoo
Summary: A Chuck/Sarah AU about how they might have crossed paths. Drabble.


**_A/N: _**Hello! I wrote this a long time ago but I didn't like it enough to carry through with it. Since then I've modified the concept but that's another story for another day. Anyway, it's something short and vague and probably nonsensical so lower your expectations. Hope you like it anyway.

**Disclaimer: **Chuck doesn't belong to me.

* * *

**Three times Chuck meets Sarah**

Their first meeting is all coincidence. It's a warm evening in September in a dingy little nightclub somewhere in Prague, and he's just looking for a way to wind down after a long business meet. All he wanted was something mindless, something that could drown out his own thoughts and make him forget.

The music was blaring, sweaty bodies were everywhere and he's finally starting to relax. He takes a sip of his drink, leans back on the conspicuously stained couch—and just then the planets and the stars come into perfect alignment and their eyes meet from across the dance floor.

She smiles and it causes him to smile too. The orbiting strobe light casts a halo over her as she wades through the dancers on the dance floor towards him.

She's beautiful, the attraction is undeniable and more inexplicably, she's asking him to dance with her. He wants to decline. He's been trained in many things but bobbing around in a club without looking like an idiot isn't one of them.

She won't take no for an answer and pulls him to his feet. His father's cautioned him on a beautiful woman's persistence but this isn't a classroom and more importantly, who cared?

She's an alluring dancer, and he just nervously follows along, trying not to admire the legs that stretch on forever or the hands that brush against his shirt and seem to know exactly where to touch. They don't exchange words, he doesn't even know if she speaks English. Tonight they dance and tomorrow he'll never see her again. If that doesn't spur a person to live in the moment, he doesn't know what does.

Suddenly she stops and cowers against him. She mentions something about an ex-boyfriend and when Chuck turns to look over his shoulder, he notices the beefcake with the severe scowl and his merry band. He doesn't even know the woman hiding against him but he feels responsible for her.

She tells him they need to leave and he offers her a ride. They bolt out of the nightclub and she suggests that she drive instead. He insists (it's his rental, after all) and for the first time he wonders whether he should be getting involved at all. It's not like he doesn't have enough problems without adding hers to it.

It's a wild car chase through dodgy streets and her ex is a surprisingly adept driver. Chuck can hold his own, he's capable of it; he just wasn't expecting such stiff competition. Or perhaps that's why his father recommended him not to drive in Eastern Europe; maybe everyone drives like a maniac out here.

Eventually they lose the ex. They both let out a sigh of relief and now that Chuck can relax, he wonders what the hell has gotten into him. He doesn't do things like this.

He looks to the passenger sitting beside him and she looks at him with a curious smile. She's impressed and that's a mistake because he's not supposed to attract attention to himself.

His heart's beating erratically and her eyes are wild with the chase. Something passes between them, an undercurrent of electricity that overcharges all his senses. There should be more, he wants more, but this is all he can have.

The woman asks him to drop her off at a nondescript hotel. She thanks him once he pulls up to the front. He's still shaking with adrenaline when she kisses him and it's not fair because he doesn't even get to enjoy the hard-fought moment.

He doesn't even get to ask if she'll be okay.

He doesn't even know her name.

Later when his father asks him how the trip was, he says "_fine" _because he won't admit a chance meeting has changed his life forever.

######

Their second meeting is serendipity. He's just returned to L.A. after months on the road and looking forward to some much-needed rest. He hasn't seen his best friend in almost a year and as he keeps telling his father, he can't do this for much longer. They need to find some other way.

He visits the Buy More to catch up with his friend and for a second he has a vision of what his life might have been like had Bryce succeeded in getting him kicked out of Stanford. It's not that he finds what-could-have-been pitiful but there are days when he wishes his life could be a little simpler.

They play games in the home theatre room. "Don't worry about it," the little bearded fellow says when Chuck asks if they are allowed to do this while he's technically supposed to be working. They promise to catch up again sometime soon and it depresses Chuck that he has no idea where he'll be tomorrow, next week, in a month.

He's just on his way out when he passes a blond in a pink shirt and gray skirt. It takes him a moment, he's not expecting to see her halfway across the globe, but when their eyes meet, he wonders how he could have forgotten. She smiles; she remembers him too.

"Chuck Bartowski," he introduces and they shake hands as if they were meeting for the first time.

Her name is Sarah Walker, she's just moved from D.C. and he swears if she smiles at him like that just one more time he'll forget that he's late to meet an old college friend. It's been months since Prague but he still remembers the way they looked at each other in the car that night. He still remembers the sheer exhilaration of being with her.

All his hopes and desires, long since repressed, suddenly wake. It might work out; they might stand a chance now that he knows a little more about her, but no. He can't.

He asks what she's doing in this Buy More of all the electronic stores in all the world and she tells him she's a trainer at the gym across the street. Her cell's stopped working and she needs it fixed. She hands him the dismembered pieces and he dissuades her from asking the so-called nerds at the desk for help.

"This model has a little screw that pops loose," he says as he deftly puts the phone back together. "Right in the back here...give it a couple quick turns..." He hands it back to her. "Good as new."

She has that look in her eyes and Chuck wonders if he's drawing attention to himself again. Or perhaps she just finds it puzzling he would carry a pocket screwdriver with him at all times.

"Thank you," she says. "That's the second time you've saved my life."

She's joking of course but she says it in a way that sounds like she really means it. She looks at him expectantly and he wants to ask her out to dinner, or maybe just for coffee. First impressions are everything though and he's sleeping on his sister's couch and inbetween jobs until he figures his life out. He doesn't have a phone number she can reach him, doesn't know what part of the country he'll be in next week and it's just not going to work.

He's saved by her now functional cell. It rings, she gives an apologetic smile and says she has to take the call. Chuck nods and makes an excuse of being late for a meeting. It's a shame and its one of life's bigger ironies that maybe if his luck had been more rotten; if Bryce had gotten him expelled from Stanford and he worked full-time at the Buy More, he'd have a chance with her.

He says "See you around," even though he knows chances are he won't. He walks away without turning back to spare himself the regret.

#####

Their third meeting is fate. He's in Paris, asking questions better not asked and looking into information he shouldn't be—to put it lightly. Why a computer analyst for an office supplies company based in L.A. is flying on the company's dime is anyone's guess. His boss, Bryce, must feel _really_ guilty about the incident in Stanford to let him run around carte blanche, no questions asked.

Sometimes he wonders about Bryce but Jill says he's no longer a part of the agency. Not since he busted his leg. But that doesn't stop Chuck from wondering.

He wonders about Jill too. Stanford was a long time ago, the wounds have scabbed over and healed but there will always be a scar. She's in deep and she'll help him, but to get a little you have to give a little and he's not sure how much he's willing to surrender. Once in a moment of weakness he told her about his mother. She promised to keep it a secret.

Chuck's got too many secrets to keep. Sometimes he can't keep them all to himself.

The trail is cold, as it usually is by the time he gets to it. They're never going to find his mother. No matter how many times he pins it on Ellie or him or on having to _be_ a family, she's become his father's obsession and his ghost. Chuck's only regret is that there's nothing in his life he feels so passionately for.

He returns to his hotel at the end of the day, enters the elevator and waits to be brought up to his room. When the door opens he absent-mindedly steps out without realizing he hasn't reached his destination—and walks straight into her.

_Her. _

"Sarah Walker." He greets her with a smile and she smiles back—once the initial surprise has faded.

She's here on vacation with her sister and it's clear she's dressed for a party but when he asks her if she's got somewhere to be, she denies it. She asks him out for coffee, always so forward, and Chuck can't deny himself any longer. Maybe things won't go anywhere, maybe nothing will happen, but he'll torture himself wondering what could have been.

They drink coffee, pick at their desserts, but mostly they talk. He can't shake off how familiar he feels to a complete stranger. He doesn't think he's spoken so many words to a single person in one sitting in years. It's mostly trivial things. They bond over siblings—she has an older brother and a younger sister; single parents—her mother died when she was young, favourite bands (or in her case—lack thereof), humdrum careers—she still works at the fitness center along with her brother.

Chuck can't put it into words but there's something about her and he's known since their first meeting in Prague. How many more times must the universe throw her into his path before he can come to terms with that?

"I like you, Chuck," she says and her approval makes his heart soar. Somehow she doesn't strike him as the sort of girl who is easily impressed.

"I like you too, Sarah." He didn't used to be so guarded about his feelings but he's learned to hold certain things back. It's too easy to get hurt in this line of work.

She quirks her head and studies him quietly. "But...?"

Chuck's temporarily speechless not from a lack of words to say but rather a profound abundance of them. There are so many excuses to give and yet none seem to be enough when she's sitting right across from him with that smile on her face.

Why can't this work? He has a place to live, a job that pays more than he deserves...the only thing standing in his way is someone else's agenda.

"But nothing," he says. His father can't control his life forever. He controls his own fate now.


End file.
